Copycats Hit Big in the Blogsphere

Around early August of this year, I came across a rather strange blog. Something just wasn't right about this particular blog. Maybe it was how familiar it looked or maybe it was because two fat cows were staring at me through my monitor. Whether I liked it or not, the blog in question intrigued me. I don't find the blog itself very helpful when it comes to making money online or even blogging in general. Why do I continue to go back to that blog? Find out!

That's right, the most famous blogging cow, John Cow (no relation to internet mogul John Chow). This 'cow' is more than just a copy cat though, he knows what he is doing. Everyone suspects that this is simply a bunch of kids having some fun, and that's probably true, but they are some smart kids. At the peek of John Chow becoming one of the most infuencial bloggers on the web, the cow roles into town just in time to make everyone take a quick glance at him. Although, with over 500 RSS readers, an expected high pagerank, and a deal with his mentor, Chow, the cow probably isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

Another copycat that just hit the seen is the Million Euro Wiki, ironically enough, the cow was behind this operation as well. This site is a spin off of the ever growing Million Dollar Wiki, which offers users a page on the site for $100 that can be edited and sold. Man, this is one smart cow. I wonder what he has up his sleeve for next time.

I came across another copy cat recently, but this one has been around for a while, he just doesn't receive as much attention as that damn cow. His name is BootMoney (no relation to ShoeMoney). However, BootMoney doesn't seem to have his acorns together and hasn't made a new blog post in almost a month. His blog theme is also very amateurish, even for a copy cat. I would love to see more attention for BootMoney, it could be a potential top blog if it has the right staff behind it.

If you have your own copycat blog or site you'd like to reveal, you've kind of missed out on the phenomenon. Not to discourage you, but that damn cow ruined it for all the honest copy cats. However, if you generally believe in your copycat blog, go for it and send me a postcard if you get rich! Also, let me know of other copycat blogs around the net!

How to Boost the Popularity of Your Blog Through Other Blogs

A great way to boost traffic to your blog is to comment on other blogs. The average blog comment takes 30 seconds to make and can potentially bring you a few unique visitors and get your name out in the blogsphere. Depending on your blog's niche, you may need to do some intense searches for the proper blogs to comment at. I recommend commenting on blogs that are big, but not too big. What do I mean? Well, if you become a regular commentator on a blog that gets an average of 100 comments per post, you're most likely to go unnoticed even if you comment on a regular basis.

I personally like to comment on blogs that are still up and coming, but receive a good amount of traffic. On the other hand, blogs like John Chow and ShoeMoney, who have 'Top Commentator' widgets on their blogs, are the major blogs you want to comment at. This not only gives you backlinks on high pagerank pages, but a free text link on sites that normally charge $400 and up.

Now, you can't just make any old normal comment and expect to see traffic from it, you have to make quality comments. Look at the comments others have made and make your comment twenty times better, say anything to strike interest in fellow readers. Show your knowledge and bring good humor to the blog and the author will see that over time and may reward you.

Good luck with your blogs and I'll see you tomorrow!

Why Can't We Be Friends? A Linking Lesson

Have you ever gotten a message from a blogger asking you to do a link exchange? Ever asked to exchange links with a particular blog? Or maybe you've even posted on a forum about link swapping with fellow webmasters? If you have, you might be some of the people google is fighting to get rid of.

Google started out in 1997 with the saying "Don't be evil" and since that time, they've been fighting webmaster evil all across the net. If you are running a link exchange, google may just have to punish you, it might not be today or tomorrow, but it will come. Now if you're like me, you started out many sites using link exchanges and the ever popular "I'll review you if you link to me" campaigns. These days are over now, though, google believes that reciprocal linking among webmasters is an "evil link scheme" to raise pageranks. This might be true for some, but I generally believe in a good link trade system, it can bring webmasters who share common interests together as friends instead of competition. Once again, google is shaking its head. They don't want webmasters to be friends, they want to pit us against each other in domes of marketing and pagerank battles. My advice to you all is forget about google, build your links, trade links with sites that are close to your niche and don't worry about your pagerank. If you simply blog with quality content and relevant linking, google will no longer matter in the long run. Ask John.

Another thing google shakes its index finger at, is paid links. There is nothing worse than small sites getting linked to by bigger sites for money. I guess google thinks servers pay for themselves these days. However, with text-link-ads becoming more and more popular, its hard to say if google will ban them all, or only certain sites. Thousands of sites buy and sell links everyday and are not penalized, I guess "Don't be evil" only applies to those making six-figure incomes. But wait. What does adsense do? What about adwords? Google's hate of text-link-ads and private link sales stems from their highest profiting products. When people can't buy or trade links with anyone else without being penalized, who do we look to?
I recommend Blackle for your search needs. Its just like google, but good for the environment!

Agressive SEO Blog Posts

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.

When you begin a blog post, how often do you think about the SEO benefits before you write? If you're a good blogger, you'll always think about.

The four elements for SEO are title, description, keywords and url. Whether you use Blogger or Wordpress you are given the proper tools for the best SEO possible. When you search for something on google, you normally see a result that looks like the following:Using Blogger isn't the best for seo, so I recommend wordpress for the serious blogger. Notice how there are 24 words in the description, this means within the first 24 words of your post, you need to insert all your main keywords for that particular post. This will ensure that google picks up those keywords within not just the title and url, but the description, giving you a good likelihood of being ranked high for those keywords.

If you use wordpress, there's one plugin that will become your seo savior. The plugin is called "All-In-One SEO" . It gives you the options to personally choose your title, description, and keywords. This gives you the ability to keep your post the same, without having to optimize the first 24 or 25 words with your keywords, you can describe your article properly and professionally with the keywords.

Remember though, you still need to optimize your title good, otherwise the right keywords may not get into the post URL, which will hurt the SEO of that particular post. Once again, always optimize the title and description with the right keywords, otherwise your post may never get seen and google will leave at the back of the line while all the good looking posts get SEOed right to the front page.

Last Word
SEO is all about title, description, keywords, and the url!

Why John Chow is Good for Blogging

A few weeks ago, I read a blog post called Why John Chow is Bad for Blogging. Now, seeing as I'm a personal fan of Chow, my interest was immediately captured. Strangely enough, the post came from a blog called Fat Man Unleashed, a journal of one man's journey to a healthier life and a good physical appearance. In his post, he details why John Chow is bad for blogging, he claims John no longer blogs just to blog, but he blogs to make money. Supposedly doing that is taking the blogging out of blogging, a weird statement to say the least.

However, in my opinion John Chow is good for blogging. Why you ask? He represents the little man taking on the world. He turned what was supposed to be a personal blog into one of the most popular blogs about making money. What Fat Man Unleashed doesn't realize is that John Chow feeds off of criticism. He loves to receive feedback, whether its negative or positive, it gets him visits and possibly a future regular visitor.

John has taken on huge campaigns of reciprocal linking which is a no-no in google's eyes. He took paid reviews, private advertising, and text-link-ads, all of which google condemns. All around the blogsphere, people talked about John and how he had seen the eye of the storm and gotten out alive. Then one day...BOOM! He's gone, disappeared out the google-plex. This would be a virtual defeat for most bloggers, but not John Chow. He continued on blogging and people saw that he was still making money, even without google. The man had come so far, google didn't matter anymore. His RSS readers were in the thousands, he had tons of stories front-paged on digg and a loyal army of John Chow lovers.

Now, some people talk trash about John on their blogs, they say he's lost touch with blogging and he doesn't post enough about making money or blogging anymore. Once again, they fail to realize that the name of the blog is John Chow dot Com, its not like Pro Blogger or Dosh Dosh. That is his personal blog, he created it to share his life and discuss what he does.

All in all, I love John's blog and I'll continue to visit it daily until he stops posting (which could be a long time). And remember readers, a blog post a day could pay for your kids' college funds one day :)

See you all tomorrow.

Blogging Patience is a Virtue

In the 1989 movie "Field of Dreams", Kevin Costner's character is spoken to by a mysterious voice, most likely supposed to be god. The voice says "if you build it, they will come". Now, the voice didn't say how long it would take, which makes it seem easy. One major problem with new bloggers is they believe that the web is full of people waiting for new sites with new content. This a huge misconception. People visit sites their friends tell them about, sites that rank high on google, and the ever popular social and video sharing sites such as myspace and youtube. The way to get your blog or site talked about is to have a popular niche (subjects people are searching for). You can build a site by providing content or a service that is unique to your particular niche.

The thing that most bloggers lack is patience. Don't simply give up hope on your blog within a short period of time, this is one of the worst problems with bloggers. If you don't have enough patience to sit still for 30 minutes, you might as well stop blogging and just blend back into normal internet society. If you are truly passionate about your niche, you can blog for hours and hours about it, just rambling on. However, don't let that happen to you, spread your wealth of knowledge out over a good period of time to keep your readers coming back for more. This will give you time to learn more and more and continue to share information with your readers.

Remember to stay interested in blogging and your niche, don't waste your time writing and working on your blog just to throw it all away when you don't see the proper results. It takes time, quality content, a great writer, a sense of humor, and some marketing skills to create a popular blog. If you have all that, pat yourself on the back, you may already or perhaps will be a pro blogger in the near future

Come back tomorrow for more about Top Bloggers and Blogging!

Introduction to the Top Bloggers

Darren Rowse has become the definition of "Pro Blogger" in today's online scene. His blog is extremely informative and not to mention really nice to look at. Everything about the design in amazing, I'd kill a few babies for a template like that. Another thing ProBlogger offers is a weekly video post where Darren goes in-depth on various issues his readers on talking about. Check out Problogger.net for all your blogging info.




John Chow made the blog of all blogs back in December 2005. Since that time it has become one of the most talked about blogs on the net...and one of the most popular. The creator of TTZ Media and proud Canadian, Chow is definitely one of the most influential bloggers of all time. He's proven you can make a good living off of talking about the things your passionate about. Affiliate Marketing, SEO, blogging tips, and of course burgers, cars, and some cow, John has it all. However, in the end, the blog is his personal blog where he discusses personal and business. Check out JohnChow.com for Affiliates, Blogging, Babes, Burgers, and Cars.




Jeremy Schoemaker is an online marketing genius, he specializes not just in affiliate marketing, but blogging and webmaster relations. He offers insights inside google, text-link-ads, and other companies. You can use his blog as a great resource to help you in your money making endeavors. Check out ShoeMoney.com for Affiliates, Blogging, T Shirts, and More.